The global oil freefall has given President Barack Obama some big bragging points with motorists, but it's adding to an economic chill that could blunt Democrats' hopes of keeping the White House.

The potential political fallout is yet another unlikely twist from oil's 18-month price slide, which is also upending U.S. relations from Russia to Iran, undermining state budgets from Alaska to Texas, and empowering Obama's efforts on climate change.

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At $32 a barrel on Friday, crude oil on the world market is selling for 75 percent less than it was in March 2012, when the GOP pounded Obama as the second coming of Jimmy Carter. Gasoline was flirting with the $4-a-gallon mark back then, while now it's down to $1.85, less than when Obama took office during an economic crisis.

Good news for anyone who drives? Undoubtedly. But it's also causing economic pain for oil-rich U.S. states, an effect magnified by the fact that the energy boom of the past decade has turned the United States into one of the world's biggest oil producers. Once-mighty petroleum companies are shedding profits and workers — BP plans to cut 4,000 jobs, Shell 10,000. New Mexico, Oklahoma and other oil-rich states face crippling budget deficits as their local economic engine stalls.

More broadly, crude’s doldrums are contributing to the same malaise on Wall Street that poses a danger to Democrats in November.

Oil’s ongoing slide may be “signaling a much weaker economy,” said Ed Chow, a senior fellow for energy and national security at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “The Democratic narrative of bringing the country back from the Great Recession and getting it back on an even keel economically, that doesn’t play so well if consumer confidence is shot.”

Some experts worry that the oil markets have already become a drag on the economy. A JPMorgan study cited by The Economist estimates that the resulting contraction of capital spending by the oil industry shaved several tenths of a percentage point from U.S. economic activity in 2015.

Republicans share the same worries, even if the GOP doesn't have an abundance of solutions to offer.

"Look at the stock market, the analysis on why the stock market has gone down as much as it has," Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) said in fretting about cheap oil's impact on the economy. Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) warned of a “Catch-22” in which predictions of lower prices could lead to even less activity in U.S. oil fields.

Then again, it would be politically tricky for Republicans to campaign against cheap oil — “I have yet to receive a single letter complaining about the price of gasoline,” Gardner noted. In any case, the “drill, baby drill” strategy they championed in the past two presidential elections offers no remedy for a glut of petroleum.

Obama has mainly been eager to play up the lower prices. “Gas under two bucks a gallon ain’t bad,” he said in his State of the Union address last week.

The president can’t really claim credit for the biggest factors behind the fall of crude: slowing economic activity worldwide, especially in China, plus a decision by Saudi Arabia in 2014 to continue producing oil at a furious pace even as demand slumped. Many analysts view the Saudis’ strategy as an attempt to drive down the price and force competitors out of the market, especially the U.S. oil producers who have found abundant supplies in shale formations in states like Texas and North Dakota.

The effects of the price drop have been varied and dramatic, in some cases to the advantage of Obama’s foreign policy: Russia’s petro-based economy is dragging, to the detriment of Vladimir Putin. Cut-rate crude also helped the U.S. reach a deal on Iran’s nuclear program without touching off fears that an end to oil sanctions would spark a global price spike.

At home, the low price undermined the economic case for building the Keystone XL pipeline, which would have imported expensive-to-produce crude from Canada. That made it politically easier for Obama to kill the project last fall. And cheap gasoline helped U.S. automakers post record sales last year — even though some greens fret that it may be hurting the market for electric and hybrid cars.

Even if Congress wanted to take action to stem the economic pain that low prices are causing, lawmakers confess there's not much they can do.

“There’s not really a remedy,” Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) said in an interview, adding that “the market’s going to fix low oil prices as it always does.”

Congress gave the oil industry the biggest item on its wish list last month when it ended the 1970s-era ban on crude exports, allowing U.S. producers to sell their crude in global markets that traditionally fetch higher prices than the domestic market. (U.S. drillers recently celebrated their first overseas shipment.) But both the global and U.S. oil prices are in the cellar now.

The victory on exports leaves pro-oil Republicans in a bind, with little to demand from Obama besides an easing of petroleum industry regulations. Instead, the administration announced new limits Friday for the natural gas industry’s planet-warming methane pollution. Those are part of what the industry has labeled a "war on oil," which it tallies at more than 100 proposed regulations, and the president has shown no signs of letting up.

Meanwhile, some Democrats see a fresh advantage for wind and solar energy as fossil-fuel projects become less of an investment draw. Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), one of Congress’ biggest climate hawks, pointed to “low oil prices as an opportunity to make the case for clean energy in purely capitalist terms.”

Still, Schatz cautioned against cheering for too huge an oil-price swoon. “What we want is disruption, but we’re also cognizant of too much disruption too quickly,” he said.

David Goldwyn, Hillary Clinton's former international energy envoy at the State Department, said he thinks Democrats like Clinton and Bernie Sanders can avoid political peril by noting that Obama agreed to end the crude-export ban, which will give the industry a better shot at rebounding once prices recover.

"I don’t think it hurts the Democratic campaigns at all," said Goldwyn, now a private consultant. "I don’t think it gives the Republican campaigns much of a talking point either, because the thing they wanted already has been delivered."